Etolling

Putting it plain and simple. Etolling of our roads is absolute hogwash, especially the M1 in Johannesburg. Its illegal and all the corporate politics associated to make further money out of public is crap. Bullying tactics of SANRAL and our government have failed so far, and hopefully continue to fail for as long as possible. It’s inevitable that we will have to pay to sit in traffic soon though. However E-tolling can be stopped, say experts.

It did however bring a clever idea to mind. Although we have good national roads, taxi services. Local residents still use private property to access other farms, water, picking of prickly pears and more. They are simply trespassing. When does trespassing become a crime, theft, break in, or even murder. Maintaining my servitude road, and general dirt roads on Ramblers Rest costs time, money and materials.No matter how many measures I put in place to stop this it seems to continue.

I have located three areas on our boundaries that are clearly used by pedestrians. I will be putting up more fencing, adding natural deterrents such as Acacia Trees and Lantana Plants. I have thought many times how to handle trespassers and do not want to resort to violence. So I have decided to etoll. Each pedestrian who insists on using the walkways and dirt roads will be charged monthly fees. This is good for many reasons. I will get a copy of their ID, therefore knowing who using my property. On top of that I will earn a monthly fee that has not been decided for maintaining the access points that are used.

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Published by ChrisJ

Live, work and play in the Eastern Cape South Africa. Enjoy gardening, the outdoors, having a toke, drinking a stout and sometimes fishing. Love my animals, 4 dogs and 4 donkeys.
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4 thoughts on “Etolling”

“Gauteng used 4.03 million litres of petrol and 2.28 million litres of diesel in 2009 for a total of 6.32 million litres of fuel (http://www.sapia.co.za/industry-over…-industry.html). Allowing for annual usage growth of just 0.5%, if government used a temporary, Gauteng-only fuel levy of 16c to pay for the roads, they would pay the debt in the prescribed 20 year time frame (19.x years actually), 32c gets the job done in 10 years and 64c gets it done in 5 years. 79c does it in only 4!

An average car takes 45 litres of petrol. 79c would add R35.55c to a full tank. Allowing for 5 tanks a month (somebody who drives A LOT) it would cost R177.75 extra per month, which is still R373 cheaper than what the government would ask the same person for tolls. Tolls that would be collected FOREVER and would take FIVE TIMES LONGER to repay the loan.

The tolls are an incredibly wasteful, inefficient, bloated, administrative nightmare inflating the cost astronomically for the public. And besides, why should we pay because they sat and did nothing for 17 years?

Also, when you take into consideration the following, it just pumps up my blood pressure even more:
– The 2012 / 2013 budget cuts tax by R9.5bn (http://bit.ly/y9HPTh) yet there isn’t money for roads
– The cost for the toll gates might be as high as R14bn (http://bit.ly/ADm4Mf)
– The minister of finance could magically produce R5.8bn to reduce toll fees (http://bit.ly/wlubSs), why can’t he just do it again next year? Or we’ll settle for 1/5th that, what is needed to foot the bill!
– Gauteng povides 39% of the countries tax revenue, but is only allocated 18% of the budget (http://bit.ly/w2pJko)
– Corruption costs SA as much as R100bn per year (http://bit.ly/xXQKA1)
– Most people have no alternative, the only alternatives are often neglected pothole-ridden nightmares. No public transport is available to most people. We are forced to take the road.
– They have not sufficiently addressed any issues surrounding fake number plates

We already pay fuel levy, income tax, property tax, value added tax and a host of other taxes. These aren’t new roads, they are existing ones, and there is virtually no difference in traffic anyway, I still sit in traffic many days.”